Sri Aurobindo

Translations

CWSA.- Volume 5

Part Two. Translations from Bengali
Section One. Vaishnava Devotional Poetry

Selected Poems of Ganodas

2

(The human Spirit has undertaken with Nature its nurse to cross the deep river of life in the frail and ragged boat of the human mind and senses; storms arising, it flings itself in terror at the feet of the divine boatman and offers itself to him as the price of safety.)

Ah nurse, what will become of us? This old

And weary, battered boat,

No iron its decrepit planks to hold,

Hardly it keeps afloat.

The solemn deep unquiet awful river

Fathomless, secret, past

All plummet with a wind begins to quiver;

The storm arises fast.

Jamouna leaps into the boat uplifting

A cry of conquering waves;

The boat is tossed, the boat is whirled; the shifting

Large billows part like graves.

The boat hurls down with the mad current fleeing,

Ah pity, oarsman sweet,

I lay myself for payment, body and being

Abandoned at thy feet.